


Through Which I Run

by dogpoet



Category: Amazing Grace (2006)
Genre: 18th Century, M/M, Politics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-11
Updated: 2011-04-11
Packaged: 2017-10-17 18:33:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/179946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dogpoet/pseuds/dogpoet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>You must know that the ways in which you make me a better man far outnumber the ways in which you bring me low, and without you, my good parts would cease to exist. We have made one another what we are.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Through Which I Run

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fromward (from)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/from/gifts).



> > Beta by [](http://www.livejournal.com/users/simoneallen/profile)[**simoneallen**](http://www.livejournal.com/users/simoneallen/)
>> 
>> I have borrowed from John Donne, Sir Thomas Browne, and the letters Pitt wrote to Wilberforce.

It was raining when Billy’s carriage arrived from London at half past midnight. The servants had retired, and it was I alone who greeted him, holding a lamp in one raised hand to keep the darkness at bay. He graced me with a wide smile as he stepped down to the wet gravel.

“Come in,” I said, “before you catch your death. Is it raining in London?”

“Not at all,” he informed me with his customary cheer.

I laid a hand on his arm and led him inside. “Why did you not turn back in this weather?”

We paused inside the door and he waited for me to shut it against the elements.

“I sleep better in the country. I find the air invigorating.” He looked me up and down in the shadows of the foyer.

“It is an impractical sleeper who wishes to be invigorated before bed,” I replied.

“Indeed, I am most impractical,” he said, entering the parlour without prompting. Any formality between us had been abandoned long ago.

I no longer needed to inquire what it was he wanted. I knew. I poured two glasses of port, and then joined him before the fire. He unseated the hare and sat in her place, bending to remove his wet shoes, an act of intimacy and familiarity, pale beside the other intimacies we had shared.

While we talked of the latest developments in Parliament, I could not but feel we were discussing ourselves. What were we, if not the causes for which we fought? During the entirety of our discussion, he never ceased his close observation of me. Whether it was his scrutiny or the effects of the port which caused heat to flare within me, I could not say. _Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun?_ I watched the firelight play across the planes of his face, the tireless movement of his hands, his bare feet like a secret revealed only to me. Billy, Billy. I recalled chanting his name during our last act of sin, as he touched me where no one else had, his mouth moulded to the bone of my shoulder. Countless times had I attempted to dampen my desire for him — _Wilt thou forgive that sin which I did shun a year or two but wallowed in a score?_ — yet had I failed despite my prayers.

Billy said nothing of our sitting opposite one another without touching, but when the clock chimed three, and I led him upstairs, he caught my free hand, halting my ascent. The touch of his fingers was like a spark from the fire leaping out of the grate to burn me. _Which was my sin though it were done before._

“It is not always sleep I desire when I am here,” he said softly.

I knew well what he meant, though I did not make answer. His face, in the dim light from the lamp, was hopeful, his cheeks flushed from the fire and the port.

“Wilber.”

“I —”

I could not say what thoughts troubled my mind, but he must have sensed my mood for he let go my hand. I continued on to the first floor without speaking until we reached the room which was called by the servants “Master Pitt’s Room,” so often did he stay.

He opened the door and turned as if to say something to me, but he thought better of it. “Good night, Wilber,” was all he said, so softly none heard him save I and the walls, who kept their own counsel. He closed the door without a sound, but it was several long seconds before I could move.

I lay awake nearly an hour, my mind consumed with thoughts of the man in the next room. He brought out in me what was most base and carnal but also most noble. We had accomplished much together, and I was certain we would yet accomplish more. He was not a religious man, no more than society required him to be, yet he was moral in ways others were not, and immoral also. It was a contradiction I could not easily reconcile in my mind.

By the light of a candle, I found a letter he had written me the previous year. I turned often to it in times of doubt, as one turns to favourite verses for succour.

> I will not disguise to you that few things could go nearer my heart than to find myself differing from you essentially on any great principle. I trust and believe that it is a circumstance which can hardly occur.… If I knew how to state all I feel, and could hope that you are open to consider it, I should say a great deal more on the subject.… What I would ask of you, as a mark both of your friendship and the candour which belongs to your mind, is to open yourself fully and without reserve to one, who, believe me, does not know how to separate your happiness from his own.

Billy had come to me the morning after composing the letter, and I had weakened. It was possible, I thought, to have faith in God and in a man, for I trusted Billy wholly and could not but open myself to him in the manner he asked. I often wondered if Billy’s secret weakness was what allowed him in publick to be so great, that descending so low spurred him to reach higher than those who might judge him. He once said to me: “We do God’s work in the ways we can.” It was some time before I understood what he meant.

Unable to sleep, I dressed and made my way down the stairs in the quiet night. Summer was drawing to a close, but insects and other creatures still rustled in the hedgerows. The rain had ceased, and the grass felt wet beneath my bare feet as I crossed to the meadow behind the house. I lay on the grass as I had once done in a similar state of mind when I had almost made the decision to devote my life to God. It was Billy’s powers of persuasion that had kept me from the religious life, and had steered me to remain in politicks.

I lay with the wet grass soaking through my shirt and looked up at the heavens. God knew all the stars, every grain of sand on the earth, and every sin in my soul. I felt as if God was close, as if He were watching. There were times when I had gambled, when I had wasted time, when I had not used my life towards God’s purpose. One could say that I did God’s work now, that Billy had won me to use my life in such a way, just as he had won me to sin. I remembered the night Thomas Clarkson, Equiano, and Sir Charles Middleton had come to the house, and they had asked me: “Can you not do both?” It was politicks and religion to which they referred, but the question applied to my current predicament as well.

The soft sound of footsteps caught my attention. It was Billy, his pale skin visible in the darkness. “I heard you wake. Are you not well?”

“You once told me that we must do God’s work in the ways we can. I often feel that what I do for God does not counter the ways in which I offend Him. God, not the people of England, will be my final judge.”

Billy lay beside me, staring up at the sky. “I cannot claim to know God as you do, who have spent many an hour in conversation with him, but do you not think He will forgive your misdeeds? You have done much for your country and for your fellow man.”

“‘I borrow not the rules of my religion from Rome or Geneva, but the dictates of my own reason’?”

“Browne was no fool.” He reached out to touch my hand with just the tip of his finger. “You must know that the ways in which you make me a better man far outnumber the ways in which you bring me low, and without you, my good parts would cease to exist. We have made one another what we are, and for that I am grateful.”

“I do not know what brought this on,” I said, turning my head to look at him in the darkness. “I have had the same argument with myself a thousand times.” _In philosophy, where truth seems double-faced, there is no man more paradoxical than myself._

“We are only men, and we must accept our faults even as we strive to correct them.”

“I am only a man,” I acknowledged, “with a man’s desires.” I curled my finger around his, and we lay that way for some time in silence.

“It’s cold,” Billy said. “Shall we go in. Will you be able to sleep?”

I turned to him in the darkness. “If you would sleep beside me.”

We both knew it to be an impossibility.

“I shall be on the other side of the wall.” He briefly touched his lips to mine.

~*~

When I woke, it was to a clear and cold morning. I could hear Billy pacing in the room next door. Still in my shirt, I left my bed to knock on his door. He opened it instantly, his gladness palpable.

“You have woken. Good. What say you to a ramble? God made this morning!”

I laughed. “He made many things.”

“Including you,” he said, gazing upon me. “And I must love what God made.”

I did not look away. “Dress and meet me in the kitchen. We shall pilfer something from the larder before we go.”

The woods beyond the house beckoned, and we set out, dogs close at our heels, crusts of bread in our hands. Billy could hold forth on nearly any subject. It was a quality I loved in him; his conversation fed my mind as bread fed my stomach, and we had no trouble passing the morning, traversing the deer paths in the wood, becoming distracted by flinging acorns at one another. It was always thus between he and I, a friendship of opposites, serious at one moment, ridiculous the next, virtuous one day, immoral the next.

In the midst of battle, he caught my arm quite suddenly, out of breath. He brought my hand to his lips and kissed the palm, then my wrist, with open mouth, regarding me with an expression I had seen him offer no one else. It was only for me.

“You tempt me, always.” I kissed him, his beautiful mouth. “This is my favourite grove. The robins nest here in the spring.” Stepping away, I bent to unlace my shoes and to remove my stockings. I cast them aside, and curled my toes in the litter of leaves and twigs.

Billy followed my example, coming to stand before me, his naked toes touching mine. A war between our toes came to a truce only when my arms stilled him, clasped tight ‘round his waist.

“Does it not call to mind a cathedral?” I asked, looking up.

He tilted his head back, exposing his neck to me, and gazed up at the ceiling of leaves. Sun shone through them, letting in God’s light.

“A cathedral, yes. I miss this when I’m in London.”

“The grove?” I threaded my hands in his newly cut hair.

“The way you see the world.” Suddenly, he broke from my embrace. “I’ll race you to the house!”

What could I do but run after him, as I always did? Leaves littered the lawn, and a fine mist filtered the sun’s light as we ran, the dogs chasing after us, the distant sound of the groundskeeper tending to those fallen beacons of autumn. Billy’s breath escaped in clouds, his shirt clinging to his skin, bits of leaf and blades of grass, distinct and startling on his ankles. The pair of us, invalided, he by thorns, I by my stomach, retreated into the house, which I could not but feel possessed a different character when Billy was present. More noticeable the quality of the light through the panes, the texture of the floorboards and the tiles beneath the soles of my feet. Was it blasphemous to say I felt close to God when I was with him, as close as when I lay on the grass to examine an insect on its journey, the blossoming of a tiny flower, or crystals of hoarfrost like a delicate growth of beard on the surface of the earth? God is in small things as well as infinite.

“Come upstairs,” said I. “Let me remove that thorn from your foot.”

Limping, he followed me to the bedchambers, empty but for us, long since tended by the servants who had busied themselves elsewhere for the day.

I fetched the tweezers, and sitting upon my bed, I bade him come to me. “Give me your foot.”

“Only my foot?” he asked, sitting opposite, setting one foot in my lap, rubbing it along my thigh. “A blind man looking for a thorn. Give them here.” He reached for the tweezers and leant over his other foot, leg bent at the knee.

It was but the work of a moment for him to remove the thorn. He set the tweezers gently on the table beside the bed. I caught his foot in my hand, rubbed the injury with my thumb, soothing it before bending to that pale, indistinct skin stained with blots of grass and mud that even my poor eyes could make out. He was lovely. His foot was lovely. I pressed my lips to its arch and heard him sigh. With one finger, I traced the shape.

“Wilber,” he whispered. “A saint could hardly be expected to resist you.”

I kissed his foot again, his graceful foot, and then the straight, neat line of his shin. At the meeting of breeches and skin, I let my fingers wander beneath the cloth.

“I need you,” he continued, foregoing the wit and oratorical skill for which he was known and for which I had long admired him. “Please.”

I had not the fortitude nor, I confess, the desire to resist that simple entreaty. I cannot place the blame for my sin solely upon him for I had won him to sin as many times as he had won me, countless times and in countless ways. _Swear by thyself that at my death_ — I climbed atop him, and we met, all our parts, our secret parts and our known parts. Lips to lips, hands to hands, centre to centre, legs twined. The rough beginnings of a beard stung my tongue in its wanderings. I bit the hard edge of his jaw, smelt remnants of wig powder in his hair. He rolled me beneath him, propping himself up on an elbow and regarding me with an expression I cannot convey, but which uncoiled the very insides of me.

Placing a hand flat on my stomach, he said: “Stomach, heal thyself.”

I laughed into his mouth as it touched mine, a bird. He bent to kiss my belly through my shirt before clutching the linen in his fist and pulling gently so as to make the slide of the cloth against my thighs and groin both pleasurable and unbearable. My cock had begun its transformation at the first press of his mouth to mine, and it yearned for the touch of his hand, or his mouth. I closed my eyes, and arched my body towards the heavens. His deft fingers unfastened the flap of my breeches and finished the business of lifting my shirt from its confines. My bare stomach felt the chill of the autumn air in the room, and then the hymn-like notes of his lips, his tongue on my skin. In my impatience and my haste, I assisted him, pushing the breeches down over my hips that his mouth might venture lower. He insisted upon teasing me, spending long minutes making love to my stomach, ignoring the place I most wanted him.

“You torment me.”

“I have the power to move Parliament, how is it that I cannot make you well?”

“My stomach is well!” I said. “Now you must use your powers elsewhere.”

He obliged me, cradling my balls in his hand as his mouth took me in, learning every inch of flesh, every vein, though he had learnt it all before.

 _Thy son shall shine as he shines now_ — his kisses, on the head of my cock, along the shaft, open-mouthed kisses, his tongue gracefully dipping into that small slit whence all things come. Cathedrals, glorious cathedrals. I opened myself up to him in the way he desired. His desire opened me. He watched me, mouth still on me. If I must fall, I would fall with him. Groves. Leaves. Sunlight. I felt a tugging deep inside me, and the earth gave way, my hands in his hair. Afterwards, I felt soft and loose, not yet sleepy.

He kissed the wet spot on my stomach, and then, hovering over me on his elbows, he whispered in my ear: “I know you, as Adam knew Eve.”

“Blasphemer!”

He laughed and kissed me, hands cupping my face, his skin warm even in the chilly room. I squeezed his buttocks through his breeches. I knew well what pleased him, and his intake of breath confirmed his pleasure. He rolled onto his back, fingers scrabbling at his buttons. I took handfuls of his shirt and worked it off over his head, though my own shirt remained on, a circumstance he soon remedied. His skin to my skin, his mouth to my mouth. His cock lay flushed and hard against his stomach, nestled in chestnut curls. I bent my head to it, breathing in his scent. I had seen him in all ways: like this, in secret, going against God, and in publick, on the floor of the House of Commons. I had seen him play cards, I had seen him at work and at study, but no sight did I love more than when we were woven together, our deepest parts, and he looked upon me in ecstasy as if I had shown him heaven’s gates.

I pressed my mouth to the tendons and muscles at his groin, and he opened to me, spreading his legs. I felt his bones beneath my hands, the very things that gave him form. One hand strayed, one finger crept to his darkest place. I rubbed him there, watching his face as his head moved back and forth on the pillow. I could make him come apart in my hands if I so wished. He did not require the attention of my mouth or my tongue, but I gave it, amazed I could so transfigure him. I breathed him in, sucking the weeping tip of his cock, spreading his buttocks with blind hands, one wet finger making a short journey inside him, only so far as his body would allow. He uttered a soft cry as he achieved release — _thou hast done_ — and I knew the taste of him, though I had known it many times before.

We lay resting, hand to hand, arm to arm. Once I began touching him, I could not easily stop. He breathed life into me. I was made from his bones. And he from mine.

“We mustn’t fall asleep in my bed,” I said softly. “My servants already think I’m mad. It wouldn’t do for them to know what else I am.”

“That knowledge is only for me.”

I kissed him, and it was not long before we began again.

~*~

It took some time to find our shoes, and one stocking eluded us altogether — his or mine, I did not know, nor did it matter. The earth shone as if newly made in the afternoon sun. A great peace filled my heart. We walked, shaking out the stockings, which were covered in leaves and mud.

“Perhaps one of the dogs buried the missing one, and we shall find it three years hence,” I said.

“Grown into a tree like an acorn?”

“A stocking tree.”

“I should like to see it!”

We did not cease laughing until we reached the house. I found a clean pair of stockings, which I put on him myself, running my hands along his cotton-clad calf.

“It will be like having you with me on my journey,” he said, weaving my fingers with his.

With regret, I saw him out to his carriage the following day.

He seated himself inside, then leant out to whisper to me: “Adam and Eve ate the fruit. There’s nothing we could have done. Let us choose our battles.”

“I have chosen,” I said.

“I must become Prime Minister again to-morrow. Will you come to London soon?”

“I do God’s work in the ways I can. I shall be there, beside you.”

 

The end.


End file.
